In the last couple months, I’ve heard, from many sources, the idea that sometimes things have to get bad before they can get good. Some law of attraction teachers suggest that the universe has to create things that you perceive as bad in order to lead you to where you want to be.
You have to hit bottom before you can go up. You need to have it all fall apart before you put it back together. You have to have a storm before you get a rainbow.
Last week, Tim and I finished updating the Novel Writing Made Easy System, my e-book/audio package. We finished our “product test”—asking for feedback, I’d sent the updates to people who had bought the original version of the package. The great testimonials I received in response went onto the sales page.
Although we’re still working on Facebook pages and I have many promotional articles to write, the bulk of the project is complete.
And yesterday, I felt lousy.
Say what?
Why did I feel bad when I could have been exulting over a job well done?
Two things happened:
One of the writing groups I belong to on LinkedIn sent its weekly update of postings. I’ve yet to post in any of the LinkedIn groups because I only finished semi-completing my profile last week, but I glanced at others’ posts. One of the posts was a writer’s complaint that she’s set up Facebook Fan Pages but has received few fans. How can she get people to notice her, she asked.
Instantaneously, I felt my energy plummet. I became tense.
I’m aware enough of my emotional guidance system that I knew I’d just had a thought that didn’t align with my nonphysical being, and I knew what the thought was: “This writer is right—it’s SO difficult to get people to notice you. As usual, I’m one tiny whisper in a sea of screaming voices. What made me thing my information would be noticed any more than anyone else’s?”
Not the most empowering thought, I know. No wonder my nonphysical self didn’t agree with it.
Of course, the law of attraction was, as always, on duty. So even though I was aware of the negativity of my thought, I’d chewed on it long enough for the law of attraction to do its work.
Law of attraction brought me the second thing that set off my lousy mood. I checked our Pay Pal and Clickbank accounts, and in the three days the sales page has been up, we’ve had no sales.
Yes, I know. Three days isn’t a long time. But this is a sales page that has been up, in its previous form, for years. We usually get a sale every other day or so at least. I decided this was a bad omen.
And of course as soon as I decided that, my emotional guidance system went off again. I felt even worse. This time, I was close to tears.
I started hooking into my old failure story: I finish a project, and it doesn’t bring me the results I want.
No wonder that by the end of the day, I felt awful. Instead of staying on the road of triumph in my completed project, I had set off down the road of doubt.
Doubt Is A Hardy Seed
In her book, One Day My Soul Just Opened Up, Author Iyanla Vanzant, writes:
“Doubt is bred in the mental state of attachment or emotional investment in the outcome. When we have a fixed idea of how things should be and how we want them to look, we become doubtful that we will get what we want.”
Doubt works like this: We focus on something we desire. At first, we may do so with joyful intent, and in that joyful intent, we take inspired action. We have enthusiasm for the doing. This is where I’ve been for the last month or so. I’ve been in a state of exhilarated focus on my project.
At some point, though, most of us start to evaluate our progress. I definitely do this. We look for some specific evidence we think signifies that we’re on the right track. We believe that if we see this evidence, it means it’s all going to work out the way we want it to. If we don’t see this evidence (as I haven’t in the last couple days), we begin to doubt the result. “The moment a seed of doubt becomes imbedded in our thoughts,” Vanzant says, “we can become so preoccupied with fixing what has apparently gone wrong that our thoughts shift from the desired outcome.”
In other words, we begin thinking about the lack of what we want. And good old law of attraction keeps on doing its work: As Abraham-Hicks says,
“The thought that you think, you think, which attracts to it; so you think it some more, which attracts to it; so you think it some more. In other words, when you have an expectation, you’ve got a dominant thought going on, and Law of Attraction is going to deliver that to you again, and again and again. And you say ‘The reason that I believe this, is because it is true.’ And we say, the reason that you believe it, is because you’ve practiced the thought. All that a belief is, is a thought that you keep practicing.”
Obviously, continuing to feel lousy isn’t helping me attract anything good, so I set about to shift my thought. Doubt wasn’t a seed I wanted to nurture. I needed to plant a different one.
Enjoyment Is A Beautiful Seed
My shift away from doubt was weak at the beginning. I tried a few thought replacements that didn’t make me feel much better. Finally, though, I reminded myself that it wasn’t up to me to control how anything unfolded. I need to get my attention off what is and put it back on the result I’ve already created in my successful identity.
As soon as I had that thought, the image of a sand mandala popped into my head. Several years ago, I wrote a newspaper column about sand mandalas, but I haven’t thought about them since. As soon as I thought of them, though, I knew why law of attraction had brought me the thought in response to my tentative mental shift.
Sand mandalas are a Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Patient, gifted monks work with colored sand to create colorful, intricate patterns. The monks apply sand granules using tubes, funnels and scrapers until the desire pattern is created. Most sand mandalas take several weeks to build.
Once they’re completed, sand mandalas are ritualistically destroyed. The destruction symbolizes the Buddhist recognition of the transitory nature of material things.
Sand mandalas are a beautiful example of the way to cultivate a different seed, the seed of enjoyment.
Obviously, when monks create sand mandalas, they’re not doing it for an end result. They’re doing it for the process, the satisfaction of the task at hand.
As soon as I thought of sand mandalas, I knew what I must do. I must bring my focus back from any result I want to what’s in front of me now. I can’t let myself think about where I’m going or what obstacles might be between me and where I want to be. I have to be here now where I want to go.
The way to do that is to keep moving, in focused enjoyment.
In the movie, Finding Nemo, Nemo’s dad, Marlin, is discouraged because his search for his son isn’t going the way he wants it to. His new friend, Dory, gives him a pep talk. Her pep talk may seem simplistic, but it sweetly and humorously captures the perfect way to trade doubt seeds for enjoyment seeds:
Unless we want to create dingy, dark, miserable things in our lives, we can’t put our focus on what seems to be going wrong with our efforts. We must keep our attention on what feels good now.
It’s the enjoyment of the process, the positive aspects of what’s in front of us, that allows us to “keep swimming” in a sea of abundance and happiness, that sea where we must remain so law of attraction will bring us abundant and happy experiences.
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Since my last post, My Path Costs Less But Delivers More, I’ve been thinking a lot about experts. I believe we give too much power away to “experts.” We think they know the “facts,” and we have to listen to them in order to get what they have that we want too.
But facts having nothing to do with what we want. Facts are only the results of someone else’s desire and vibration.
Actress and writer Ruth Gordon said: “Never, never, never, under any circumstances, face facts.” Good advice.
Experts have their place, of course. They can teach us new skills. They can provide valuable information.
But an expert’s place isn’t in the driver’s seat of our experience. They need to be, at best, an instrument on our dash.
In the movie, Major League, one of the players on the Cleveland Indians baseball team, Pedro Cerrano, worships the voodoo god, Jobu. He needs Jobu’s help to hit a curveball. As Cerrano says, “Bats, they are sick. I cannot hit curveball. Straightball I hit it very much. Curveball, bats are afraid. I ask Jobu to come, take fear from bats. I offer him cigar, rum. He will come.”
Late in the movie, in the pivotal game near the end, Cerrano comes to bat. He’s been making offerings to Jobu for weeks, and he still can’t hit a curveball. He decides he’s done with Jobu. He says, “I stick up for you Jobu. You no help me now … I say fuck you Jobu. I do it myself!”
A couple days ago, I had my Jobu Moment, that moment when you say, uh, “To heck with you so-called expert or guru, I’ll do it myself.” I decided to follow my own good feelings and alignment to creating the success I want.
Five Reasons To Have A Jobu Moment
When is it time for you to have a Jobu Moment and listen to your own desire and intuition instead of someone else’s facts?
1. When the experts are draining your bank account
If you’re in a situation like I was in before I realized that my path costs less but delivers more, you may be throwing away money on books, audios, and training programs. I don’t care how “important” an expert’s information seems to be; it’s not important enough to deplete your finances for.
2. You’re following the experts’ advice, and you’re frustrated that it’s not working for you.
If you are doing what the expert says to do, and you’re not getting the promised results, this expert’s advice isn’t helping you. You’re not aligned with it. It worked for the expert, and for some of the people the expert teaches, because they are aligned with that path. You’re not. You’re especially not aligned with it if you’re frustrated. When you’re frustrated, you aren’t aligned with anything you want. Move on to the path that you are aligned with.
3. What the expert wants you to do doesn’t feel good to you.
When I was promoting my books, I spent over $3000 on a training program that promised to get your book on Amazon’s bestseller’s list. As I listened to the training calls, I became more and more uncomfortable. The actions they advised taking didn’t appeal to me at all. I knew I was going to have to force myself to do what they were teaching. Worse, not only did I not want to do it, it struck me as borderline unethical. Still, I’d paid good money for the program (which wasn’t refundable), so I kept at it … until I got very ill and then realized that to make the system work for me, I was going to have to spend another $2000 that I didn’t have to spend.
Truth was that I had a weird feeling about the program before I bought it, but I ignored my gut because the sales page promised such wonderful results. Never, ever, ever ignore your gut.
4. You are about to give up or you already have given up something you want because the expert says it isn’t possible.
I recently came across an “expert’s post in a Facebook writing group. The expert advised people to give up the idea of selling a novel to a big name publisher because “it just isn’t going to happen.”
I had to provide a different perspective. I commented that I sold to a big publisher, unagented, which is akin to winning a huge lottery. It CAN be done, I said. The “expert” responded that the reason I was saying that was because I sold a novel writing e-book. That was the farthest thing from my mind when I made my comment. I’ve simply been on the receiving end of “you can’t do that because …” too many times, and I wanted writers to hear what they could do instead of what they couldn’t do.
Never let an expert take away your desire. You can have anything you want. In fact, you already have it on a vibrational level. All you have to do is line up with it.
5. The expert’s success is based on people buying his or her advice
Many law of attraction experts who advise people how to get money have made their money selling advice to others on how to get money. Hmm. What’s wrong with this picture? Why should you listen to someone who has made their money from people like you who want money?
And in fact, why should you ever listen to any expert?
Four Reasons To Listen To An Expert
1. The expert’s advice lights you up.
The ideas the expert is teaching feel very good to you. You’re excited about the information. You’re enthusiastic about it.
When you feel this way, you’re vibrationally aligned, and when you’re vibrationally aligned, you’re attracting what you desire. Of course, you can get vibrationally aligned without listening to an expert, but if one feels good to you, go ahead and listen.
2. The expert emphasizes what you CAN do instead of what you CAN’T do.
If the expert is full of success stories and puts the emphasis on limitless possibility instead of dire warnings of doom, his or her information could be worth listening to.
3. The expert admits he/she doesn’t have all the answers but wants to share what worked for him or her.
This kind of expert understands that facts are relative, and that you can create your own facts. You can take the parts of this expert’s opinion that fit with your path and leave the rest.
4. The expert’s success had nothing to do with your buying his or her advice.
If the expert has accomplished what he or she is teaching independent of your buying his or her program, he or she has a story that could be worth hearing. Whenever you see evidence of someone else’s success it helps develop a belief system that lines up with your own success.
It took me several years and a lack of funds to figure out when I needed a Jobu Moment. How about you? Do you need a Jobu Moment?
Not that I’m an expert or anything … but maybe something in this post will help you keep your power instead of giving it away to an expert who isn’t helping you align with your desires.
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Last year, we repainted the interior of our house. While we were at it, we redid the floor in our home office too, and to do that, we had to completely empty the room.
If you’re going to empty a room, you might as well sort while you do it. So I went through every file in our filing cabinets, every drawer and every shelf.
The job started out fun. It always feels good to toss clutter. But as I continued on, I began to feel lousy. Really lousy. In fact, miserable.
The more I cleaned, the worse I felt.
Why did I feel so awful?
All those files I sorted through contained evidence of “failed” projects. Greeting card copy that never sold. Essays that never sold. Manuscripts that never sold. Websites that didn’t take off. Internet marketing courses that failed to help me succeed. Press releases that failed to get me the publicity necessary for a bestselling book.
Years and years of effort overflowed my office, and I had very little to show for it. I felt like I’d fallen into a putrid landfill of my own worthlessness.
It was one day, but its impact stayed with me for a long time. Until last week, actually.
The first line of the post is, “The belief in failure is so widespread, it almost appears to be pandemic.”
Whoa.
I didn’t read further for several minutes. Just that line had my attention. They had me at “the belief.”
The belief in failure?
There’s an idea worth thinking about.
I went on to read the whole post, which points out that the belief in failure is a choice. It’s a choice, the post said, that we usually make without realizing it; but it’s still a choice.
In that instant, I saw what I’ve been doing for the last year. I’ve been purposefully vibrating on a match with failure. A YEAR!
Since that day in my office, I’d decided to believe in my failure. I chose to see all those files full of projects that didn’t turn out the way I expected them to as failure. And once I made that choice, I nurtured it the way you would a newborn puppy. I bottle fed it my self-loathing and wrapped it in my disappointment.
I grew that belief into a full grown rambunctious, dogged identity (sorry—had to keep the canine analogy going).
Talk about a vibration that wasn’t at all a match to what I wanted! And alignment? Ha!
As soon as I understood my choice, I changed it. Yes, it happened that fast. Instantaneous.
I thought about all that work in all those files, and then I thought, “Wow, I’m SO prolific. Look at how much I’ve done in the last few years! I’m so industrious and productive. I’m so willing to dive into new things. I have learned so much. I have so much courage and persistence.”
These thoughts felt great, so I kept going: “If I can do all these things and try all these enterprises, I must be a truly strong and powerful woman. Only strong people are able to take on so much and stick with it even when things are going the way they want. I have so much knowledge. I know what doesn’t work. That’s great—it will help me choose something that does work. AND now I know that the reason all these things didn’t bring me the success I wanted was because I was living in that “not good enough” story. And now that I’m not living in that story, I’m aligning with who I really am, and now I can combine my strength to produce so much with the vibrational focus of my thought, and I can create wonders. Since I was aligned with failure and I created what I saw as failure, I’m actually a SUCCESS, because I focused my power and got exactly what I focused on. Wow—I’m amazing!”
And just like that, I made a shift so life-changing that it was like stumbling out of bed in the middle of the night and coming face to face with Santa Claus.
Failure is a belief.
Did you know that?
Do you believe in failure?
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather believe in Santa Claus.
I love comment and welcome yours. To leave a comment, click on the “comments” link (it will say “No comments or “1 comment” or more) at the end of the tags in “Posted in” at the end of this post.
In Complaint Free Relationships, which I read last weekend, Will Bowen references narrative psychology, a field built on the belief that the stories we tell about ourselves shape our identities and ultimately our lives. I hadn’t thought about narrative psychology in years, but I learned about it in college (I majored I psychology).
The idea is that we take the experiences we have in our lives, and we create a narrative around them, a story that connects the experiences and attaches meaning to them. It’s a sort of connect the dots thing we do to hook random events together to create “truth” where none really exists.
Once we create our story, we look for experiences to reinforce our story. We also filter new experiences through that story.
I mentioned in the post, Throwing Away The Drill, that for much of my life, my story was “I’m not good enough.” My story was more complicated than that, obviously. It had a lot of subplots about who I am as a wife, a friend, a writer, a dog mom, etc. But that was the theme of my story.
That’s not my story anymore, but my new one isn’t a whole lot better. And I wasn’t even aware of this lousy story until I saw that passage about narrative psychology. Then the title of my narrative flashed across the wide screen of my mind, with nice bright graphics behind it: “I Have Succeeded At Anything In Years.” Can’t you just hear the dirge-like, heavy musical score with lots of slow oboe and tuba action in it that goes behind that title. Maybe some nice screechy violins too.
When you have a narrative like this, you create a cast of characters for it. These are the qualities and feelings that you that you associate with your story. Here’s part of the cast that’s been starring in my story:
Failure (Big hairy dude with bad teeth)
Disappointed (Sniveling petite woman who blinks a lot)
Frustrated (Freckled kid who chews on her nails)
Doubtful (Old woman with a perpetual frown who carries mace in her huge old purse)
Angry (Big, big, big woman who eats Hostess cupcakes all day and growls like a dog)
Lousy Marketer (Weasel-like bald guy who corners people in elevators to sell them vitamins)
Worn Out (Thin woman with stringy hair and narcolepsy)
Terrified (Shrill blonde with red lipstick who’s constantly looking over her shoulder)
I could go on, but you get the idea.
Is it any wonder I’ve not been getting what I want lately? How can I with a story like that?
The law of attraction responds to how we feel now, not how we want to feel. When you have a lousy tale, you don’t feel good enough to wag your tail. If you’re not wagging your tail, you’re not attracting things you want.
If we want new experiences, we need to tell a new story.
So here’s my new story (inspired by one of Tim’s favorite slang words):
“Ande ROCKS!!”
Like it?
It sure makes ME feel good.
Here’s my new cast of characters (I won’t bother to describe them—they’re all vibrant, beautiful (in their own way), funky, and fun):
Amazing
Enthusiastic
Ecstatic
Radiant
Energetic
Fascinating
Wise
Funny
Rare
Insightful
Brilliant
Creative
Blessed
Blissful
Charming
Pioneering
Joyful
Kind
Inspirational
Intentional
Loving
Appreciative
and several more; but the star of the show is ……..
I’ve started living from this story instead of the dark one I’ve been telling myself for months. When you live from a story, you look at your experiences from the perspective of this story.
So whatever happens to me, I have to filter it through “Ande ROCKS!” and my cast of characters. This forces me to put a whole different spin on my experiences.
What about you?
What’s your story?
Who stars in it?
How does it affect your life?
Got a great story? Tell me.
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“Seeing is a believing.” Most people live by this cliché.
Of course, anyone who understands the law of attraction knows the opposite is true: “Believing is seeing.”
I’ve known for a long time that believing in an outcome is important to achieving the outcome; but in the past, I’ve had trouble developing the beliefs I need to achieve what I want.
Years ago, I attended a week long self-improvement seminar that focused on drilling through your past to find your dominant “story,” the one belief about yourself that impacts everything you do. The belief I found (and it wasn’t difficult—it was lying right on the surface) was “I’m not good enough.”
I’m not going to rehash all the reasons I developed that belief about myself. Why would I want to go back and activate a vibration around all sorts of negative stuff? But that is the belief I carried around for a very, very long time. And it’s a belief that creeps back in from time to time, like the occasional bug that manages to get past an exterminators’ chemicals.
My book shelves used to be stuffed with self-help books designed to help you ferret out your limiting beliefs and patterns. All these books—I’m talking literally hundreds of them—asserted that if you can find your “core beliefs,” your “imprints,” or your “self-repeating patterns” (and other similar catchy names), you can change them and transform your life. Every one of these books was usually full of helpful programs or systems or exercises that were supposed to excavate the crud in your psyche and clean it up.
Before I bought all those books, I paid thousands to a therapist who was supposed to help me do that too. She too had plans and tasks that were supposed to change my old beliefs.
If I were to total up all the hours I’ve spent making lists, writing out old memories, repeating affirmations, doing meditations and visualizations, and journaling about belief systems, they’d probably fill a whole year of my life. And did I ever get rid of my old beliefs?
Some of them, yes.
Am I a transformed person? Somewhat, yes.
Did this process make my life all wonderful?
No.
So what am I going to do with all these beliefs that may still be holding me back?
I’m going to ignore them.
Abraham-Hicks says, “If your desire is strong enough, it doesn’t matter what your beliefs are. If you have a desire that is strong enough, that desire will be the dominant vibration, and it will over-ride any other vibration that you have.”
It doesn’t matter what your beliefs are. Wow. I wish I’d known that before I invested in all that therapy and those books and workshops. But that’s okay. All those experiences provided contrast that showed me what I truly want.
What do I want?
I want to be happy without all kinds of work attached to it.
Self improvement can turn into a job unto itself. I believe we shouldn’t have to work so hard to be okay.
And we don’t have to.
I have finally come to understand that the old beliefs, the old patterns, the old imprints are irrelevant if we follow Abraham-Hicks’ most basic teaching: find reasons to feel good.
You don’t have to go looking for negative beliefs if you’re paying attention to how you feel. If you start feeling bad, you can be pretty sure that some negative belief has erupted from within and is guiding your thoughts. Why bother to drill for the things if they’re going to jump out and wave their arms around right in front of your nose?
Let’s say you have moles in your backyard. You used to drill down into the earth to throw in smoke bombs or poison or bleach or whatever other mole-killing concoction you heard about. Then some very smart person told you about a vibrational sensor you had built into your lawn. This sensor goes off every time a mole is creating another dirt mountain on your grass. All you have to do is go out there and redirect the mole.
Wouldn’t that be handy?
Well, we have such a sensor for our industrious old beliefs and negative thought patterns. Abraham-Hicks calls it our emotional guidance system. It is absolutely fool proof. When we’ve activated a negative belief or thought, we feel bad. All we have to do is find a thought that feels better.
Simple.
Picture that robot in Lost In Space flailing its mechanical arms about: “Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!”
Who needs a drill when you have a helpful robot?
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Making feeling good my #1 priority has changed my life! I now have a new site, Up From Splat. Come visit me at Up From Splat and get ongoing inspiration, encouragement, and resources to help you align with all your desires!!
In the last couple months, I’ve heard, from many sources, the idea that sometimes things have to get bad before they can get good. Some law of attraction teachers suggest that the universe has to create things that you perceive as bad in order to lead you to where you want to be.
I’ve started living from this story instead of the dark one I’ve been telling myself for months. When you live from a story, you look at your experiences from the perspective of this story.
